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Warehouses are facing new safety challenges. The current safety programs aren’t keeping up with the pace, as proven by the recent warehouse injury and fatality statistics. What’s more, most companies are struggling to compete with e-commerce giants that can make changes swiftly. However, if you don’t have a safe warehouse, you’re at a high risk of losing your hardworking workers, fines, losing your customers, and lawsuits.
Establish safety procedures
According to EHS Today, there are thousands of illnesses, injuries, and deaths reported every year in the warehousing industry. Most of these are caused by accidents like hazardous materials, slips and falls, and equipment malfunction among others. To protect your workers, you need to establish safety procedures. A good safety procedure will start from the top to the bottom. This will help to build values into your company culture.
Eliminate hazardous materials
Get industrial cleaners to help you keep the floors clean and free from slip and trip risks. Additionally, ensure that your employees know the need for good housekeeping. Remember to conduct regular inspections on liquids, pits, stray cords, cracks, and accumulated debris. This is important as these hazards can cause serious injuries, illnesses, and even death. They can also damage your valuable cargo and machinery.
Train your employees
Providing your employees with adequate safety training will ensure that they know the costs of working in a hazardous workplace. Ideally, you should always train employees after hiring. However, employees may forget what they learn or things may change. Therefore, you should plan for refresher employee safety training sessions. Additionally, you may want to consider having a set of written safety standards and post them in public places with frequent traffic.
Keep the loading docks safe
One of the high-traffic areas in your warehouse is the loading dock. It has intersections of employees, heavy machinery, cargo, and obstructive visibility. Therefore, there is a high likelihood of a collision if proper precautions aren’t taken. For example, a worker can fall and get injured if they focus too much on what they’re doing and forget to check where the edge of the dock is. You can prevent such potential accidents by using brightly colored tape and placing signs. Other simple steps include; making sure that dock ladders and stairs have handrails, securing dock-plates, and preventing forklifts from backing to the dock’s edge.
Ventilate the warehouse
Proper ventilation is one of the most overlooked safe warehouse practices. Don’t underestimate how racks and stacks can impede airflow in your warehouse. This can lead to limited air circulation and let the stale exhaust linger and stagnate your warehouse. Having the airflow checked, especially in areas with high traffic is a matter of both employee safety and comfort.
Bottom Line
Adhering to the set workplace safety laws and regulations can transform your warehouse into a happy and productive place. Your employees want to feel safe when working, and you can facilitate this by establishing safety procedures, eliminating hazardous materials, training your employees, and using safety signs. Remember to ventilate your warehouse and keep the loading docks safe.
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